SOCIOLOGY AND HERO-WORSHIP 



ciety is exposed. Not even Mr. Spencer's wide 

 experience of the infinite possibilities of miscon- 

 ception could have led him to suspect that in 

 this instance he might be charged with ignoring 

 the individual Smiths and Joneses of whom 

 society is composed ! 



This due reference to surrounding conditions 

 is the qualification to which I alluded a moment 

 ago as necessary to give completeness to Dr. 

 James's statement. When we say that the dif- 

 ference between the England of Queen Anne 

 and the England of Queen Elizabeth is due to 

 the accumulated influence of the initiatives and 

 decisions of individuals, to what initiatives and 

 decisions do we refer? Certainly not to the 

 abortive ones ; not to those initiatives and deci- 

 sions that had been promptly crushed out or 

 held in check, but to those that had been allowed 

 to develop and fructify in the great events which 

 make up the English history of the seventeenth 

 century. In other words, we refer to those indi- 

 vidual initiatives and decisions which had been 

 selected for 'preservation by the aggregate of the 

 conditions in which English society at that time 

 was placed. So that, even in stating the case as 

 Dr. James states it, we find ourselves unable to 

 get along without tacit reference to the environ- 

 ment. 



It is true that in regarding the changes of so- 

 ciety from age to age as due to the cumulative 

 167 



